Cranes undertake some of the most demanding migrations of any bird species, and their welfare along migratory routes is threatened by habitat loss, hunting, and collision with infrastructure.
Individual cranes making long migrations face exhaustion, starvation at degraded stopover sites, and death from power line strikes and hunting. The concentration of cranes at traditional staging areas makes these sites both critical and vulnerable — degradation or disturbance at a single key site can affect the welfare of tens of thousands of birds simultaneously. Protecting crane migration corridors and staging wetlands provides cascading welfare benefits across entire flyways.